Sally Jollied Us Up

There is medicine. And there is medicine.

Reader’s Digest magazine has long carried a section titled “Laughter the Best Medicine.” It consists of a page or more of jokes sent in by readers and is rather pleasing fare.

Chances are the idea for the title came from the Biblical lines: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” (Book of Proverbs 17:22, K. J. V.).

This brings to mind how some 15 years ago--soon after we came to Fort Rucker and decided to settle in the Wiregrass for good--the fine people living near our house (Note: there appears to be a missing line here. --ed.) in the fall and winter. What food! What fun! What a privilege!

Once they asked me to help plan one of these parties. It was to be, as usual, a covered dish affair and guest of honor was to be a dear old soul about to turn eighty.

The problem was that the dear old soul had so many friends and acquaintances we didn’t know whom to invite and whom not to invite. As several of us met to work out detailed arrangements, part of the conversation went to this effect:

“Let’s be sure to ask Sadie. She makes the best cakes in the county! Uses pure butter!”

“Sure! We’ll just tell her, outright, ‘Sadie, we want you to bake the birthday cake!’”

“That’s fine, but if we ask Sadie, we’ll have to invite her sister Vera Mae. And Vera Mae will ruin the whole day, telling her troubles and all the other bad things she’s been through--or heard of--since the year one!”

“That’s Vera Mae, all right! Maybe she will be off down in Baldwin County visiting her relatives and we won’t have to ask her. She stays down in Baldwin County about half the time ... Now I tell you who we’ve got to get to come! Sally Dougal! Sally will jolly us up!”

Well, Sally came and “jollied us up!” And as the seasons and years went by I noticed that Sally was invited to every such party held. But I seldom saw Vera Mae. Maybe she was off down in Baldwin County.

No. The plain truth is, cheerful people are far more desirable companions than those long of face and broken in spirit.

When it comes to real medicine, it is possible to make substitutes. This I learned just this past summer, from books on what conditions were like in southeast Alabama during the Civil War era.

Medicines became very scarce in the South as the Union blockade cut off the Confederates’ sources of supply. Result was that substitute medicines had to be made.

“Quinine was probably the scarcest drug,” writes one historian. “Instead of this were used dogwood berries, cotton-seed tea chestnut and chinquapin roots and bark, willow bark, Spanish oak bark and poplar bark. Red oak bark in cold water was used as a disinfectant and astringent for wounds ...”

The distinguished Alabama writer Alexander Nunn of Loachapoka has in one of his books, numerous Civil War letters written by an Alabama soldier named G. W. Ross. And these touch on medicine.

In a letter dated December 20, 1861 young Ross describes his stay in a Confederate Army hospital in Lynchburg, Va. Here, he talks not of medicine but of the doctors.

“I have been at the college hospital at Lynchburg seven or eight days,” he writes,” and I am very well satisfied with the fare and attention we have given us here. ... We have very kind physicians here as much so as any that I ever knew, which adds much to a fellow’s feelings whether it improves his health or not.”

In any era--whether it is Biblical times, Civil War days, or the current 1970’s--laughter and merriment are good medicines. And when it comes to feelings, there is no substitute for kindness!

Published November 1978. Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.